"'My Sister Loo?'
Said Tom. 'She Never Cared for Old Bounderby.'" by Charles S. Reinhart. 1870. 13.3 cm wide by 10.2 cm high (horizontally mounted, with text above
and below on a page 24 cm high by 16.2 cm wide).
This plate illustrates Book Two, Chapter Three, "The Whelp," in Charles Dickens's Hard Times, which appeared in
American Household Edition, 1870. Page 171.

In James Harthouse's hotel room, having detected at Bounderby's a change
come over Louisa's face as she opened the door for her scapegrace brother,
Harthouse plies Tom with drink and strong tobacco to wheedle out of him the
secret to winning his sister Loo's affections. Reinhart has little to go on
from Dickens's scant description of the room at the railway hotel: "Tom was
soon in a highly free-and-easy state at his end of the sofa" (170), left,
which the artist has augmented with a matching easy-chair, right. At this
point, as in the text on the previous page, Harthouse has risen from the
couch, "and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he
stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked" (170), studies the Whelp.
Their conversation, focussing on Louisa's upbringing and subsequent
marriage, continues on the selfsame page as Reinhart's plate, smoke
ascending from Tom's recently lit cigar, his glass ("a cooling drink adapted
to the weather") now drained. The furnishings and chimney-piece are rather
better than one might have expected, but perhaps the ally of Gradgrind and
Bounderby, "Those Hard Fact Fellows," has been given the best room in the
house.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]